Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1887-05-02
to the teeth, in this great battle against

to the teeth, in this great battle against q
depraved literature.
Again: Abstain from those books which
are apologetic of crime. 1t is alsad thing
that some of the best and most beautiful
book-oindery, and some of the finest
rhetoric, have been brought to make sin
attractive. Vice is horrible thing any
how. 1t is born in shame, and it dies
bowling in the darkness. In this world
it is scourged with whip OF scorpions,
but afterwards the thunders of Gods
wrath pursue it across boundless des-
ert, beating it with ruin and woe. When
you come 70 paint carnality, do not paint
it as looking from behind embroidered
curtains, or through lattice of royal
seraglio, but as writhing in the agonies
of city hospital.
Cursed be the books that try to max
impurity decent, and crime attractiv g,
and hypocrisy noble! Cursed be the
books that swarm with libertines and
desperadoes, who make the brain of the
young people whirl with villainy! Ye
authors who write them, We publishers
who print them, ye booksellers who dis
tribute them, shall be cut to pieces, if
not by an aroused community, then at
last by the hail of divine vengeance,
which shall sweep to the lowest pit of
perdition all ye murderers of souls.
tell you, though you may escape
in this world, you will be ground
at last under the hoot of eternal
calamities, and you will be chained to the
rock, and you will have the vultures of
despair clawing at your soul, and those
NH yuif
around
TO TORMENT YOU,
and to pour hotter Goals of fury upon
your head, and rejoice eternallY in the
outcry of your pain and the howl of your
damnation. "God shall wound the hairy
scalp of him that goeth on IN his tres
passes"
The clock strikes midnight. A fair
form bends over a romance. The eyes
flash fire. The breath is quick and trreg-
ular. Occasionally the color dashes to
the cheeks, and then dies out. The
hands tremble as though 8 guardian
spirit were trying to shake the deadly
book out of the grasp. Hot tears fall.
She laughs with shrill voice that drops
dead at its own sound. The sweat on
her brow is the spray dashed up from the
river of death. The clock strikes 4, and
the rosy dawn soon after begins to look
through the lattice upon the pale form
that looks like detained speCter Of the
night. Soon in a madhouse she will mis-
take her ringlets for curling serpents,
and thrust her white hand through the
bars of the prison, and smite her head,
rubbing it back as though to push the
scalp from the skull, shrieking, "My
brain! my brain!" o, stand off from
that! Why will you go sounding your
way amid the reefs and warning buoys,
when there is such vast ocean in which
you may voyage, all sail set?
There is one other thing shall say this
morning before leave you, whether you
want to hear it or not. That is, that l
consider the lascivioUs pictorial literature
of the day as most tremendous for ruin.
Thire is no one who can like good pic
lures better than do. The quickest and
most condensed way of impress!ng the
public mind is by picture. What the
painter does by his brush for q few ia
vorites, the engraver does by his knife
for the million. What the author accom-
plishes by fifty pages
THE ARTIST DOES BY AFLAsH.
The best part of painting that costs
$4,000 you may buy for ten cents. Fine
paintings belong to the arstocracy of
srt; engravings belong to the democracy
of art. You do we'll to gather good pic
lures in your homes. Spread them be
fore your children after the tea hour is
past and the evening circle is gathered;
throw them on the invalid's couch; streW
them through the rail train to cheer the
traveller on his journey; tack them on the
wall of the nursery; gather them in al
buns and portfolios. GoG-speed the
good pictures on their way with minister
les of knowledge and mercy!
But what shall l say to the prostitution
of this art to the purposes of iniquity?
These death warrants of the soul are at
every street corner. They smite the vision
of the young man with pollution. Many
q young man buying a copy has bought
his eternal discontinue. There may be
enough poison in one bad picture to poi
son one soul and that soul may poison
ten, and ten fifty, and fifty hundreds and
the hundreds thousands until nothing but
the measuring line of eternity can tell the
height and depth and ghastliness and
horror of the great undoing. The work
of death thai a wicked author does in
whole book the bad engraver may do on
q half side of a pictorial. Under the
guise of pure mirth the young man buys
one of these sheets. He unrolls it before
his comrades amid roars of laughter, but
long after the paperis gone the result may,
perhaps, be seen in the blasted magma
lions Of those who saw it. The queen of
death holds banquet every night and
these periodicals are the printed invita-
ton to her guests. Alas, that the
fair brow of American art should be
blotched with this piague-spot, and that
phi'anthropists, bothering themselves
about smaller evils, should lift up no
united and vehement voice against this
great calamity!
Young man! buy not this moral
for your soul! Pick not up
this nest of coiled adders for your pocket
Patronize no news stand that keeps them!
Have YOUR room bright with good en-